You can’t measure (impact) what you don’t track – so the business wisdom goes. 

With just eight years to go to achieve the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, calls for multi-sectoral participation have become more urgent than ever. The corporate world, flushed with fresh capital, therefore need to show that their businesses can lead to real impact on SDG agenda. 

Recent eight participants of UNDP's Impact Aim Venture Accelerator programme, which aims to strengthen Indonesian start-ups' SDG measurement skills, were motivated by this urgency. In fact, based on the lessons gained by the eight* businesses that participated in the accelerator program, co-led by venture capital company 500 Startups, it was evident that defining impact-oriented targets is no longer geared toward commercially-oriented operations.

According to the Sustainable Development Report in 2021, Indonesia ranked 97 out of 165 nations for SDG achievement, with an index score of 66.34 out of 100. Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), comprising over 90 percent of the country’s workforce, play a vital role in the push to achieve the SDGs. However, the socio-economic and health impact of the pandemic has reversed much of Indonesia’s gains towards the SDGs with 68 percent of MSMEs experienced disruptions in their business activities.

In the midst of uncertainly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the startups have tapped on impact measuring tools towards developing new solutions or diversifying their products and services 

Impact Aim alumni & IMM context

The startups reported that, measuring impact and integrating the practice into their core businesses has been more than just a tool for social change. 

Many businesses have produced new goods and solutions through market innovations and employed impact measurement to penetrate new markets and increase market position by incorporating impact into business procedures.

Impact: developing new solutions based on market gaps or needs

For Qlue, a smart-city platform, this meant shifting to IoT-based technology to develop a temperature screening device named Qluethermal, a solution, born out of the pandemic, and now used by the Government as part of its COVID-19 health protocols.

Sampingan, an on-demand platform for side gigs, also responded to sudden market demand for extra jobs, particularly among women, during the recent spike in Indonesia’s unemployment rate. By featuring a range of positions nationwide, , the startup reported that  around 450,000 women benefitted from its efforts during the pandemic. 

Similarly, Sehati TeleCTG used impact to deliver a new range of personalized technology and tailored maternal health-products across Indonesian regions, allowing them to access new private markets and eventually, a listing in the government E-Catalog.

Impact measurement and management also provided a useful tool for startups to tap into existing market resources, using it to boost their operation. In assessing the waste landscape in Indonesia, Mycotech explored the use of mycelium leather waste into secondary products as well as bioplastic creation from water waste sources.

Impact: ‘survival mode’ - shifting models against the pandemic

Most startups, MSMEs and social enterprises in Indonesia were impacted by the pandemic and forced to work on strengthening internal business practices. For impact-oriented businesses such as the Impact Aim alumni, this means drawing new models for impact, which can help them stay resilient for future shocks and crisis such as the pandemic. 

Tech Prom Lab returned to the drawing board to identify existing strengths in their PoreBlock line – a permeable, water-absorbent building concrete developed for flood mitigation. This paved the way for the startup to expand PoreBlock’s reach from local MSMEs to government and state-owned enterprises.

Similarly, KitaBisa, a Southeast Asian-wide crowdfunding platform, expanded their impact business beyond their past concentration on donation-based crowdfunding activities –exploring new opportunities in aid, disbursement of fund, and even insurance.

Indexa Law is another example; the start-up expanded its impact reach beyond governments to end-consumers and enterprises by developing more efficient search engine analytics and sharper digital marketing techniques to give legal analytics and law information in their platform.

Impact: strengthening market positions

 Incorporating impact measuring metrics has also proved beneficial in establishing the company’s position in the market. Such was the case for InfraDigital Nusantara, a data-focused digitalized services platform for schools in Indonesia. As a result of tracking individual-level impact outcomes on its beneficiaries, the platform became a leading example for competitors in the edu-data landscape, simultaneously serving 3,500 educational institutions.

These examples from the Impact Aim alumni startups demonstrate how impact measuring enhances business sustainability by serving communities and ensuring sustainability in commercial growth.

*Note, at the time of interviews, one alumnus was not available to be interviewed and therefore complete analysis only shows data from 8 out of 9 Impact Aim alumni.

Written by: 

Cindy Abigail Colondam, Technical Assistant Impact Investing

Kalila Anneszka Wibowo, Junior Consultant Innovative Finance and Impact Accelerator 

Edited by Tomi Soetjipto and Ranjit Jose